Peter Brown is a longtime fave of mine (see, e.g., this 2015 post and my Year in Reading essay from that year), so I was pleased to see his interview with Nawal Arjini in the NYRB newsletter (archived); the whole thing is worth your while, but I’ll excerpt this particularly Hatworthy bit:
I travel because it always surprises me. Places and monuments, works of art and landscapes are never quite what one imagines them to be. Nor are people. Some of the languages useful for my research abroad are what we call “dead” languages: Latin, Greek, classical Hebrew, Coptic, Ge’ez (Ethiopic), etc. These are keys to entire past civilizations. But even in the modern world, languages are a reminder that all societies have their own surprises. To attempt to read and use languages other than one’s own, even if only a few phrases, is a mark of respect for the otherness of other people. For this reason, I have always encouraged my students of late antiquity to learn not only the classical languages but the languages in which modern scholarship has been conducted, so that they realize that historical research is a worldwide matter, and that it is many centuries old—like a great symphony that has been playing for centuries.
Preach, brother! …Oh, all right, just a couple more bits:
Each age produces its own historians with their own ways of asserting the truth. Perhaps the most urgent need we have today is to develop a sense of the strangeness of the past and a sense of urgent searching for the truth to ensure that the past is not forgotten, or flattened by being presented as so “like us”—no more than a mirror of ourselves—that it can be manipulated without challenge.
[…]
Furthermore, the study of the place of Europe in the wider world of Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia (along the Silk Road that linked the Mediterranean to China, and the great caravans that joined the Muslim cities of sub-Saharan West Africa to the Nile) challenges us to read traditional evidence in new ways and against magnificently wide horizons. I am particularly excited by the way in which recent studies of premodern Africa have added a hitherto neglected continent to our picture of the medieval world. This is particularly the case with Ethiopia, where newly discovered manuscripts, archaeological surveys, and the study of art and material culture have revealed dynamic societies at the crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, between Christianity and Islam.
You’re expecting me to weigh in by pointing out that all this is really every bit as much the case with West Africa as Ethiopia. So I will.
I think that, for all that, my favourite instance of how civilisation in Africa has never really fit in neat boxes is the mediaeval Christian kingdoms of Nubia in what is now Sudan, literate in their own Old Nubian and in Greek. (Their courts may even have been Greek-speaking.)
The first quote is a bit of a squib. To move from “keys to entire past civilizations” to “To attempt to read and use languages other than one’s own, even if only a few phrases, is a mark of respect for the otherness of other people” is a very sudden descent from the sublime to what might almost pass for tokenism.
so that they realize that historical research is a worldwide matter, and that it is many centuries old—like a great symphony that has been playing for centuries.
Very true, but don’t forget the little puddles, pools, and lakes that persist despite the homogenising effect of the great ocean (which, in our era, tends to be the “Western Ocean” or even worse, “English Ocean”). The coexistence of different “traditions” can actually be quite discordant. For example, the tension between traditional Japanese grammatical terminology and modern linguistic terminology in Japanese. The persistence of old terminology is quaint, it’s cute, it’s necessary if you want to discuss Japanese grammar, but there is a definite jump involved as you move from one set of terminology to the other.
From the introduction to Sidwell and Jenny’s brand-new survey volume, The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia, in which the current state of research is surveyed:
…
That’s great, thanks for spreading the news!
DE:
… has never really fit in neat boxes …
I’m surprised (though I hold back from frank alarm, for now) to see from you this use of fit as opposed to fitted, because I thought it was almost exclusively AmE in careful prose. Bearing in mind transatlantic leakage of regional varieties in publishing, see these relevant ngrams. See also these, where “it never fit” is entirely absent for BrE. OED records no instances of “has fit” in its quotations, but eight for “has fitted”.
Speaking of “dynamic societies at the crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, between Christianity and Islam” does seem to be an attempt to interpret the past based on the present, i.e. what the author warns us against.
After all, Christianity versus Islam is a bit of an obsession these days (interpreting the results of the election in France today without referring to said obsession would be rather challenging, to put it mildly), and quite apart from the fact that the history of the pre-Christian and pre-Islamic Middle East is fascinating in and of itself, it should never be forgotten that at many points in history divisions within Christianity and Islam were each far more important (to the bulk of believers themselves as well as to their rulers) than the Christian/Muslim dichotomy.
To say nothing of lesser-known instances of intercontinental contact: Echoing David Eddyshaw’s example above, my personal favorite is the claim (which seems likely to my mind) that the Ethiopic script became a syllabary (as opposed to its ancestral consonant-only script) as a result of the influence of Brahmi, via trade contacts in the Indian Ocean.
@Etienne, my usual complaint – something that keeps annoying me since I got interested in North Africa – is the great division along the Mediterranean sea and also cutting the history of Africa itself in two, before and after the Muslim conquest.
It exists in our minds when we think of either Europe or Muslim world and it simply does not match the reality: people of the two shores have always been in contact and there is continuity between Christian/Roman North Africa and Muslim North Africa (with immense changes brought by Islam on top of this continuity).
The desire to compensate for this division is understandable (to me). Not because I’m so interested in religions – I’m tired of them – because someone else has torn the two worlds apart.
And what you’re saying (“divisions within Christianity and Islam were each far more important (to the bulk of believers themselves as well as to their rulers) than the Christian/Muslim dichotomy.”) is a part of it: yes, to the German monarch his war with French king is more important than whatever happens in the North Africa.
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Having this said, I’d rather avoid focusing on religions and even we are speaking about religions, the reqion in question is diverse in this respect. What it contains is not just “Christianity” and “Islam”.
“…, is a mark of respect for the otherness of other people.” – some people do look at it this way. Definitely I’m not against this view. Can’t share it because I eat out of hunger rather than respect to anything:)
Sadly, when a lady “from Dagestan” wrote about her relationship with her “native langauge” and I asked what language it is she responded “one of langauges of Dagestan”:((((( (about as informative as “Earthling” and “one of natural languages of Earth”). The idea that an outsider will learn somethign like Tabasaran is not even seriously considered, I think.
“…learn not only the classical languages but the languages in which modern scholarship…” – maybe less common among historians, but they too are supposed to be familiar with literature.
“so that they realize that historical research is a worldwide matter, and that it is many centuries old” – this is something general public should realise. Won’t harm:) When historians don’t, we have a problem:))*
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* on the other hand, presently there are really, really many English speakers studying history of the ME and other distant regions. This must be good for the English-speaking world.
Or maybe not “really many”? It is my subjective impression that such people are all over the place (cf. the recent Hugo nomination, which I mentioned (events of the novel take place on Soqotra) and which I won’t read, the Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi written by a lady who wanted to study the ME history).
cutting the history of Africa itself in two, before and after the Muslim conquest
While there certainly have always been some contacts between West Africa and the Mediterranean world, there isn’t really much doubt about the importance of Islam specifically in such contacts since that conquest took place.
While I take your point that all divisions of the obviously-continuous process of history have some degree of arbitrariness to them, the Muslim conquest of North Africa really did have major consequences for Africa, and pretending otherwise would be as silly as denying the before-and-after quality of the later European invasions.
Even as resolutely “pagan” a people as the Kusaasi can’t be properly understood without taking Islam into account. (As I have often mentioned, one of the Kusaasi folktales I have found clearly reflects an Arabic source, ultimately based on a Buddhist Jātaka story.)
It’s hardly disrespectful to the dignity and autonomy of African history to acknowledge the profound effects of influences that originated outside the continent. Quite the opposite, in fact. That way lies all the “darkest Africa” nonsense we know and despise.
@DE, by “history of Africa” I meant both North and sub-Saharan Africa…
I think what I wrote is more true of formerly Roman Africa (especially the word “conquest”). I don’t think anyone needs to cut the history of West Africa : first its pre-Islamic history and also that of first centuries AH is not very well known, secondly general public here is not even aware of it.
I don’t pretend that the Muslim conquest brought “immense changes”. But there are two parts here: the continuous part and the discontinuous part. “Change” itself too has a continous component. Of course the conquest brought with it (apart of Quran and the hadith) the Arabic language, certain patterns of urbanism, likely certain marriage patterns and customs etc. etc. etc.* Lots of everythign, right on the surface and obvious.
But it brought this to mostly local people.
“Over centuries they abandoned everything that makes them local and became cultural clones of people of Yemen and Dagestan” would be an oversimplification:)
So what I feel is that this continous component is ignored. We speak of these two as two worlds, and I think we should not.
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* the French conquest also changed a lot (in marriage and urbanism at least). And the Internet.
“Over centuries they abandoned…”
Also the division is instantaneous. Roman Africa was conquered and… Now it is MENA.
Augustine, Apollonius Dyscolus (pardon spelling) were both from North Africa. It’s a modern sensibility that makes me feel a bit “weirded out”, as though they don’t quite belong to our modern Western world.
I always find it harder to make coherent, lucid comments on a phone. (Or at least less fragmented, incoherent ones.)
Also Priscian.
“oblong to our modern Western world”
“to extend as to form an oblong shape” explains Wiktionary, so I spent a while imagining the oblong Western world (or Augustine) until you corrected it.
Actually “orthogonal” might work slightly better.
(The opportunity to correct comes up very slowly on my phone.)
I think Augustine is what Aramis of the three musketeers used to read in the cycle, while laying the foundation of the modern western world.
“To attempt to read and use languages other than one’s own, even if only a few phrases, is a mark of respect for the otherness of other people.”
Doesn’t this depend on the people whether it would be considered respect or not? There are American Indian languages or some dialects of Romani which are meant for in-group use only, and it is not desired that outsiders learn them. Roy Andrew Miller described Japanese in the 1970s as a language where locals would prefer that foreigners speak only a debased form of it, as becoming too proficient would feel like an intrusion into their closed society. There are young people today who are so proficient in English that they consider it, too, their own, and they so detest the sound of a bad accent in their native language, that speaking English would be regarded as the most respectful thing to do, and so on.
Roy Andrew Miller described Japanese in the 1970s as a language where locals would prefer that foreigners speak only a debased form of it, as becoming too proficient would feel like an intrusion into their closed society.
I was in Japan in the 1970s and can’t say I really struck this attitude. Jealous of their own closed view of Japaneseness but they certainly welcomed me speaking Japanese. (Or maybe I just didn’t notice.)
Yeah, Roy Andrew Miller is great fun to read but (like most raconteurs) given to exaggeration.
Are you sure you don’t mean Jack Seward?
Hmm… maybe I was thinking of Seward!
I lived in Japan in the late 1980s, and I always felt that there was a class divide. Working class Japanese were always very happy to hear me speak Japanese, very encouraging and very friendly. It was typically the university educated but not well travelled types who seemed put off when I would interact in Japanese. Whether it was a desire to keep the foreigner out (as Roy says), a sense of shame/embarassment that their own English wasn’t better, or simply greater awareness of the mistakes I was making (and thence annoyance), I can’t say. Certainly in the 1980s attention to the appropriate level of keigo was very much alive among the higher social classes, which made interaction with foreigners in Japanese very awkward. Working class Japanese seemed to not really care that much about keigo and were happy to address and be addressed by foreigners as equals.
That makes a lot of sense.
following drasvi:
to my eye, the flip side of that is the deeply bizarre ways that the history of ottoman europe (not to mention al-andalus) is generally dealt with (mostly by ignoring it or pretending it was an inconsequential interlude), which makes it damn near impossible to understand the actual history and cultural landscape. because of the particular bees in my bonnet, i see this particularly in the ways that yiddish jewish culture is shaped by the ottoman ekumene far more deeply than by the german sphere that it is almost invariably talked about in relation to (perhaps a similar linguistically-based dynamic to the one that wants to see the maghreb through a peninsular arabic lens rather than a locally oriented one).
presently there are really, really many English speakers studying history of the ME and other distant regions. This must be good for the English-speaking world.
we can hope! but i’m reading ammiel alcalay’s wonderful (so far, at least!) book ‘a little history’ right now, which is pushing me to add: it depends on what exactly is being studied, since that shapes what lines of thinking are opened up and what ones are closed off or obscured. (there’s an analogy to language-study to be made here, probably through SIL and its sister projects, i think, but i’m not going to try to spin it out)
the ways that yiddish jewish culture is shaped by the ottoman ekumene far more deeply than by the german sphere that it is almost invariably talked about in relation to
That’s an idea that this goy boy has never encountered, not even in the smallest way, when reading novels/memoirs/biographies featuring aspects of Jewish cultures in Europe and points east. “Far more deeply” is starker Tobak. Have you some specifics ?
I may have mentioned before how in pre-Castro Cuba the Jewish community was divided between the so-called Turks (“turcos,” i.e. Sephardim) and the so-called Poles (“polacos,” i.e. Ashkenazim). Many/most of los turcos had come from the Ottoman-ruled Balkans outside the borders of post-Ottoman Turkey, but as rozele suggests this may obscure the historical experience of Ashkenazim from e.g. Hungary and Roumania etc. where prior Ottoman rule was important in various ways in shaping their identity and culture.
“… that shapes what lines of thinking … ” – which is true about any education.
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A paradox that bothers me and which I haven’t solved is that when we grow up where we do, it becomes really hard for me to find a slightest shade of originality in my own thinking (or art).
On the other hand, if someone (a genius) has grown up in the jungle without even the privilege to be raised by wolves, she’d hardly ever invent airplane no matter how smart she is. Or arythmetics. Or cave paintings (beyound maybe handprints).
(Also, of course, grown up in the jungle is far from “tabula rasa”).
Oe possible solution is that even human geniuses are in reality not terribly creative:)
I say bothers, I mean that. Because we spend so much time to derail off the “lines” of thinking imposed on us.
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Back to education, obviously it can be horrible (they can just teach you something evil).
But I wonder if it can actually somehow enourage independent thinking, given how little of it I find in myself (or at least open-mindedness which seems easier).
“inconsequential interlude” – I like these words (I mean, I don’t like what they mean, but they DO describe the situation).
Perhaps has to do (or not) with how it looks from here. And from here it looks simple: “English and French traitors of Christendom did not let us complete our Reconquista (surely driven by greed*)”.
Guess for Serbs it is worse than that:)
We could add Germans… But after WWII no one will discuss WWI here.
Two associations are: a student who when they were removing Rhodes’s stautue from the University of Cape Town (I think he granted the land where it was built) appeared in the news arguing that “colonialism is not African history, it is interruption of African history”.
And whatever Arabs feel about Israel too. I don’t think I ever heard them discussing this, but I guess Israel jsut should not be here, and its contriubution in regional cultrue is not going to be appreciated or discussed.
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Obviously at the moment I’m not discussing who is right or wrong and who has a good reason for such sentiments, and whose reason is not so good.
* English and French traitors are driven by greed, not the Reconquista. Only assholes can be driven by greed, and assholes are them.
By the way, speaking about cross-Mediterranean links. I wanted to ask about this before, I think once I alread wrote a long comment with links but did not send it, and a short comment another time which I could have posted… or not. Sorry if I’m repeating myself. So there are 4 facts whcih I don’;t know how to connect.
1. A Russian name Ksenia (it’s very common, the dim. is Ksyúsha) from Greek ξενία is usually explained as “hospitality”. But I think “alien”. There are several saints after whom they are named, at least one described as “rich Roman lady who moved to a distant iceland where she was called Xenia by locals”.
2. “Barbara” essentially means the same, but I don’t remember similar stories.
3. Numerous synagogues named Ghriba (same meaning) in North Africa. One of them on the island of Jerba still has a local Jewish community and there are also annual pilgrimages to there – but there are more of them: in Tunisia, and I think Algeria, Libya and Morrocco.
So there is a story about a girl who came to Jerba (on a raft or boat if I remember correctly) after the destruction of the Temple with Torah scrolls and was called Xen… Sorry, Ghriba by locals.
And there is a story about a lady hermit…
And there is a story about… (I forgot).
A plenty of explanations why it is called “ɣriba” but all about aliens.
4. A famous song by Idir – possibly the most famous Berber song ever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qcSdqc7QYo
It is based on a fairy tale that involves a girl named Ghriba (ʀriba, for /ʀ/ is the local realisation of ɣ).
Unfortunately I haven’t seen its Berber or Arabic (if it is “North African” rather than just “Kabyle” tale) text:(
There is a German version by Frobenius (and its French translation), Ghriba there is rendered as “Rova” and I din’t even recognise the name. But Brugnatelli thinks it is how Frobenius transcribed /ʀriba/ (but why not Riva? Why -⟨o⟩- ?).
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It all looks like these facts are somehow related and there is some story behind. I mean, I don’t expect to learn when how and why first alien girl appeared in the Mediterranean – but maybe someone knows SOME of the missing context? Or maybe can provide more examples? Or more detail for any of the above – why the girl is called with Arab Ghriba in the Berber tale for example (she’s not an alien there)?
@J. W. Brewer:
I think that’s a more widespread phenomenon in the Americas:
When I was growing up in the 80s my hometown in Argentina still had two entirely distinct congregations (with separate synagogues) along those lines.
Alon, I saw a cartoon once by a current Argentine cartoonist (whose name I don’t remember). The cartoon had stereotypical Jews speaking with <sh> for <s>, e.g. “grashiash”. What do you think that is supposed to represent? Portuguese-inflected Sephardis?
(He is absurd, and rude, but to me, not offensive. That strip cartoon was called something like “The chair, that if you sit in it you become antisemitic”.)
What do you think that is supposed to represent?
People who really don’t want to be killed at the fords of the Jordan?
a cartoon once by a current Argentine cartoonist (whose name I don’t remember)
This strip by Gustavo Sala.
Thanks! (How do you do that??) And now it’s clear they’re talking like that because they’re drunks, not because they’re Jews.
Wow! Thanks, Xerîb!
I looked at the WP link and the first sentence I noticed started with “En 2012, Sala tuvo problemas…” And I thought, I bet he did…
Hat: drunks? I don’t see how (no bubbles above them or such), or what that would do with the joke.
Oops, I read it too sloppily and thought they were lying in the gutter or something. You’re right, there’s no indication that they’re drunks, I guess I was subconsciously substituting the obvious circumstance when people are represented as shibilating their sibilants.
substituting the obvious circumstance when people are represented as shibilating their sibilants
Well, in the public imagination confirmed bachelors also lisp their sibilants. Perhaps there are more drunks than fairies in real life, but the media give the impression that it’s the other way around. Drunks are no longer amusingly salonfähig.
In contrast, even non-lisping presumably confirmed bachelors can be quite diverting: Men’s Eyebrow Tutorial. Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Well, in the public imagination confirmed bachelors also lisp their sibilants.
What do mean, “also”? Lisping (“tho thorry!”) is quite different from shibilating (“sho shorry!”).
With same-sex marriage a thing, the confirmed bachelors are a smaller demographic now. We call ourselves asexual. I don’t lisp and I pay less attention to my eyebrows than my hairdresser thinks I should..
“Confirmed bachelors” was used in the past by some older women to mean … well, you know. Didn’t this come up here recently ? That was the sense I was playing on, for delicacy of expression.
What do mean, “also”?
I mean lisping as well as shibilanting. Both are degrading to sibilants.
I pay less attention to my eyebrows than my hairdresser thinks I should
I now allow my Turkish barber occasionally to remove one or the other pesky hair from my eyebrows. Well, he does ask. It must be because I’m not a Turk, not because he does not want to offend my masculinity. Turks of all ages spend a (to me) incredible amount of time in that barbershop having their hairs tweaked and plucked and combed. Even when the barber is finished, they stand for minutes peering into a mirror, looking for single hairs the barber might have missed.
In the days of more widespread Confirmed-Bachelordom, wasn’t alcoholism a conventional affliction of the Tragic Homosexual stock character as depicted on stage and screen and/or in lurid pulp novels? Lithping and shlurring need not be mutually exclusive, but can coexist.
Sure. That’s what I was hinting at with the word “also”, to which Hat took exception – but only for terminological reasons.
Babies and young children often lithp. Maybe some Tragic Homosexuals adopted the lithp to stimulate the corresponding protective instincts in the hetero pop. Didn’t work, did it ? They also tried Big Liquid Puppy Eyes, to equal non-effect.
Genteel, drunken Confirmed Bachelors also have expressive, mobile eyebrows. I imagine Noël Coward did.
(Sure enough, he did.)
Lars Mathiesen, I appreciated your comment here just a while ago. (And Trond Engen’s follow up: Do Swedes and Norwegians (or Faroese and Icelanders speaking Danish, come to think of it) sound gay? Asking for a friend.)
I wonder if there is a paper or book somewhere describing and cataloguing various phonetic signifiers of gayness found in different languages around the world.
Genteel, drunken Confirmed Bachelors also have expressive, mobile eyebrows.
Some CBs have all the luck. I have none of those behavioral features at my disposal (apart from cebelity, that is). I have flourished only because I can say vicious things in the nicest imaginable tone of voice.
From the Wikipedia article:
I like this:
On his speaking manner:
I wonder if there is a paper or book somewhere describing and cataloguing various phonetic signifiers of gayness found in different languages around the world.
It wouldn’t surprise me if there is, or if one is to be soon. There has been so much recent research on that very subject in English, anyhow. I would guess that as elsewhere in linguistics, the progression is, Major Language, then some studies comparing Major Language to some other language, then broader comparative/typological studies.
I didn’t catch the “30 pesos” bit until now.
Puts me in mind of the infamous Israeli antisemitic cartoon contest.
@Y
“Israeli antisemitic cartoon contest” sounds as a Jewish (by and about Jews) joke.
Jewish humour here is quite self-ironical.
Quite so. It was also meant to dull the edge of the Iranian contest, which was not based on good intentions.
@Stu, I did appreciate your delicacy, but we can’t all be blushing flowers innit. “Confirmed bachelor” as a circumlocution for gayness is something I know from Wooster-era literature. Not that Bertie wasn’t set in his ways, but not in the “his friends will be very surprised if he ever marries” way.
As much as we make fun of the term here, I think “confirmed bachelor” meant many different things back in the day. It could imply gay, or asexual, or purposefully celibate (Holmes), or unlucky in love, or someone who only has short-term affairs.
Bertie Wooster often had crushes on women, which were all torpedoed by Jeeves. Mostly because he judged them wrong for Bertie, but all because a marriage would ruin the basic premise of the stories.
And then there’s Der Ball der Weiberfeinde of 1884 in Berlin, as described by Krafft-Ebing. There was no actual Feindschaft described. They were all what we would now call gay and queer men and trans women.
“Woman-hater” is (or was) certainly sometimes a euphemism for a gay man in English.
“Woman-hater” is tendentious and over-the-top, hardly a euphemism. The assumption there is that if you don’t love ’em, you hate ’em. Some sort of insecurity thing, I suppose.
Myself, I simply have no interest in women, in particular no sexual interest. Just as I have no interest in soccer or cars, in particular no sexual interest. Now that age has freed me from testosterone, I have no more interest in men either.
I think dogs are great fun. And they don’t run off with your best friend.
I would think that the great majority of woman-haters are now, and always have been, heterosexual men. This would appear to impair the validity of such a “euphemistic” usage.
The Andrew Tates and Donald Trumps may well harbour well-founded fears about their own lack of masculinity, but this does not suffice for them to qualify as homosexual, an orientation which (moreover) seems to be fully compatible with lack of any insecurity about one’s masculinity whatsoever. I feel that there may be some confusion of thought here.
Compare and contrast, He-Man Woman-Haters Club.
Back when homosexuality was not widely familiar but misogyny was, the latter was a possible if imperfect theory to explain men unattracted by women. Or as Stu says, if you don’t love ’em you hate ’em.
Back when the co-existence of overt misogyny and heterosexual masculinity was so common not as to necessarily be remarked over, there was still in many quarters a sense that disliking women to the extent of not even wanting to have sex with them was perhaps taking things a bit too far. This perspective may have failed to appreciate the reported reality of absence of attraction not coinciding with active dislike or disdain. Widespread cultural diffusion in those long-ago days of a Freudian-or-pop-Freudian etiology of adult male homosexuality as merely a prolongation of the common young-boy phenomenon of finding girls gross and icky at age nine or whatever may also have been a factor.
A. I say! Have you heard? Carruthers has fallen in love with a gorilla!
B. Extraordinary! Male gorilla or female gorilla?
A. Good grief, man! Female, of course! Nothing odd about old Carruthers|
@DE, Actually… (fourth-to-last paragraph; it is from a syndicated advice column published in US city weeklies. It may be unpleasant reading for some. It deals with gerbils.)
@Y: look around for the work of kira hall or niko besnier, and that might lead you to some work on cross-cultural comparisons – i’m sure someone’s given a paper at Lavender Language & Linguistics about it, if the conference is still running!
@Stu: i wish i could point you towards a good summary, but the yiddish/ottoman connection is a bee that’s lodged in very few bonnets. here are a few traces and sources, though! all of it a bit tendentious, as you might expect.
first, yiddish jewish culture is, geographically/demographically, basically a product of the ottoman periphery, especially the southern polish-lithuanian commonwealth and the ottoman lands across the largely hypothetical border (current romania, moldavia, ukraine, southern belarus, southeastern poland) – that’s where the bulk of the population was, and generally holds the centers of innovation for key cultural forms, especially before the late 19thC/early 20thC – yiddish theater (mythically founded in yash/jassy/iași); hasidism; much of klezmer music; most likely the painted wooden synagogue and cemetery tradition.
[the less populated northeastern zone (“lite”, as opposed to “galitsye” (southeast), “raysn” (central east), “poyln” (central west/northwest)) gets a lot of extra attention because it produced a disproportionate number of largely-non-cradle-speaker yiddish scholars at the turn of the 20thC, and because it was home to specific figures who’re seen as centrally important to the most respectable parts of the religious sphere (the vilna gaon, in particular). and, of course, because it’s considered more genuinely “european” than southeastern europe.]
but for that whole region, the ottoman world was where Culture was. one detail, probably familiar to hattics, whose implications tend to get glossed over: the polish nobility made up a whole turkic lineage for themselves to try to out-ottoman the ottomans; less noted is that contemporary hasidic jewish dress emerged in the 19thC modeled on polish ‘sarmatian’ fashions.
second, where we can trace clear lineages for specific elements of yiddish jewish culture, they generally point southeast. zev feldman’s magisterial Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory, for example, includes a tour-de-force of historical documentation tracing the defining dance and dance-music genre of early 20thC yiddish music – the bulgarish/bulgar – to the black sea beef trade that supplied the ottoman military with the raw material for basturma/pastrami (the same dance, with some overlap in musical repertoire, is called “hasapiko” [butchers’ dance] in greek). one earlier example is the tradition of painted synagogues and cemeteries, which is centered in podolia/bukovina/galicia, right along the ottoman/commonwealth border. the aesthetics are very much the same as those of ottoman tents and kiosks – take a look at the 18thC gvazdziets/gwoździec synagogue, which was recreated for the Polin museum, and you can even see stylized rope ornamentation between the image panels (among many other architectural and ornamental elements that thomas hubka describes as directly from ottoman tents), as well as the köşk-shaped bima [reciter/ritual-leader platform].
and what’s genuinely wild to me is that the idea of a german cultural orientation gets taken seriously at all as anything but a back-projection of the personal commitments of late-19thC and 20thC scholars (max weinreich, above all) who were trained at german universities in a period where german cultural scholarship was considered the best around, and generally spoke german before they spoke yiddish (even if russian rather than german was their cradle-tongue).
why on earth would any sensible yiddish jew in the 17th, 18th, or early 19th century look northwest with admiration? at what? an incoherent jumble of micro-states in a constant state of war, many of them under direct or indirect rule by various christian clergymen, regularly expelling and un-expelling their few jewish communities? especially when in the opposite direction is one of the richest empires around (and one of the stablest), that’s gone out of its way to welcome vast numbers of sefardic jewish refugees, considers itself the protector of jerusalem and guarantees pilgrimage access to jewish holy sites, and even helped squelch a messianic movement that threatened to create an open schism in practically every jewish community. there’s no contest.
I found a 2022 survey (Schwieter and Rivera, “Describing and perceiving sexual orientation based on linguistic cues: an update of Schwieter (2010)”), with lots of references (especially pp. 142–144). As expected, numerous studies about English, and a smattering about other languages (Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Italian, Mandarin, Thai, German); Zulu/Ndebele-based IsiNgqumo is referenced as well. I didn’t see references to broader surveys, but if they don’t exist, I’m sure they will soon.
here are a few traces and sources, though!
Fascinating stuff — thanks, rozele!
rozele, could the idea of a German cultural orientation, as you call it, come simply from the fact that Yiddish is Germanic, together with the tendency to equate linguistic history with cultural history?
@Y: yes, for sure! to my eye, though, that’s more the logic that’s used to make it seem unquestionable, with the aspiration to European-ness being more the source/driver of it. it’s a way to make Ostjuden into Actually Westerners (not like all these oriental slavs around us).
I am not aware of the association with specifically Germans described by rozele, but if it exists, I’ll also note that German speakers too before the well-known events were found all over East Europe.
rozele mentioned members of the Polish szlachta creating false Turkic lineages for themselves. Perhaps better known is how Orthodox Christians aped and adopted elements of Kipchak culture to become the modern cossacks. The two happenings may well be related, as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was one of the states in which the cossacks enjoyed special status, admired as a warrior elite.
Well, it is unsurprising that different people engaged in steppe warfare use similar tactics and weapons, and though I don’t know how many contacts there were other than fights, even warfare is enough to adopt elements of each other’s dress.
Of course this does not mean that prestige as such did not play a role – I just mean, when you borrow something from neighbours telling considerations of prestige from “just borrowings” may not be easy.
And what is easy is seeing “Oriental” elements in European cultures as essentially “wrong” and to start explaining them (without showing similar interest in “Occidental” elements).
I knew about Sarmatism, but it had escaped me that the mythical Sarmatians were thought to be Turkic… it makes sense of course…
And hairstyles & stuff. Anything that seems practical, including in this context scary, is going to spread.
“were though to be…”
Were they? For us “Turkic” is primarily about langauge. But both Sarmatians and Nogais are “steppe people” and there is a reason to mix them up.
Towards a taxonomy of identity:
You can identify a people with another based on their
(a) genes (b) langauge (c) culture (d) legends
also Platonic
(e) same niche (and as result, convergence).
(f) continuity. You adopt a child, then she changes her langauge and culture.
Now in absence of common genes or language there is a continuity.
So what I want to say is that Turkic speakers and Iranic speakers are the same thing according to some of these.
Even genes: some of the (genetical) sources of modern Turkic speakers could once be Iranic speakers. Then you can derive them from a subset of Iron Age Iranic speakers.
@drasvi: Some modern Turkic speakers almost definitely descend from Iranic-speaking groups. The Kipchaks, for example, were quite magnanimous about accepting unrelated peoples into their culture. This includes other groups of Turkic speakers (the Cumans, for example may have originally been a separate but nearby Turkic-speaking group that merged with the Kipchaks relatively early on); but besides speakers of disparate branches of Turkic, it is known that they also assimilated groups of Mongolic speakers from the East. It seems very likely that there were also some Iranic speakers from the South that also joined the Kipchak culture, although I don’t think that’s so well documented.
I now allow my Turkish barber occasionally to remove one or the other pesky hair from my eyebrow
My overtly heterosexual wise-cracking mesolect-speaking Viennese barber also trims my eyebrows as a matter of course. I assumed Europe is simply more attuned to male grooming than the US in general.
the centers of innovation for key cultural forms, especially before the late 19thC/early 20thC – yiddish theater (mythically founded in yash/jassy/iași)
For my sins I am spending 3 days in Iasi next week on a business trip. I assume there are no traces of Yiddish theater to be found there now? On my last trip to Iasi it struck me as a place where the pre-Ceausescu past has been scrubbed away almost entirely. Some Romanians seem convinced it is one of the most happening and even attractive cities in Romania, I am still not sure why.
@Xerib, @Lars: i happen to be in Denmark right now, but I had forgotten about that question and have completely neglected to listen for male vocal fry. I’ll try to do better from now on. Is there anything else I can do to investigate the matter (that won’t put my wife and kids in embarrassment)?
This thread is the first time I learn about anything being done with men’s eyebrows. Maybe it’s some sort of hipster or bobo thing?
It’s some sort of growing older thing. The hair control professionals started taking an interest in mine about the time I turned fifty.
Yes, even at Hair Cuttery in the US years ago the stylists (usually women) would generally do a little eyebrow trim on those of us old enough to need it. Not everyone is aspiring to the Andy Rooney look.
Yes. My barber not only trims my eyebrows but shaves my ears.
theo waigel augenbrauen is a Google search suggestion.
I found a 2022 survey
Thanks for finding that, Y!
For years now I have had my eyebrows trimmed at the barber’s unless I specifically ask them not to. Tempora mutantur …
And though we are a naturally beautiful people here in Wales, it is probably true to say that Wales has never really been famous for male grooming. Not since woad went out of fashion, anyhow.
These are evidently deep waters. Perhaps the eyebrow thing is tribute to my excellent fellow-countryman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Abse
@Trond, relax and go to La Glace (Skoubogade) for coffee. Your wife will thank you for it. (Vocal fry should be all over the place, I have never noticed differential prevalence). If you’re still around Saturday, we should meet up.
The verb beetle ‘to project’ is, e.g., in Hamlet, “To the dreadful summit of the cliff / That beetles o’er his base into the sea” and in Wordsworth’s In a Carriage, upon the Banks of the Rhin, “Each beetling rampart, and each tower sublime”, per WAry. For lack of a better explanation, this comes from beetle-browed, itself going back to the 1300s and reasonably deriving from the shape of the antennae of some of those insects. The OED gives some explicit examples of “beetle-browed” as a metaphor for projecting parts: “A pleasant valley, (of either side of which high hils lifted vp their beetle-browes, as if they would ouer looke the pleasantnes of their vnder-prospect).” (Philip Sidney, Arcadia, c. 1586); “Tree-garnisht Cambriaes loftie mountaines Did ouer-shade me with their beetle browes.” (Weever, Mirror of Martyrs, 1601).
@Lars: I’ll be in Copenhagen from Saturday to Sunday and would very much like to meet up. (I should have made contact before but wasn’t sure if I’d have time for anything.)
By “put my wife and kids in embarrassment”, I meant things like attempting to speak Danish with a heavy vocal fry to investigate the reactions of the natives.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhmathies/
(Edit timer outed).
I don’t think eliciting works, it’s all subconscious unless you make a habit of listening for such things. I suppose there are some manly men who will be aware and get into a cockfight with their peers about the quality of their fry, and males who want to deemphasize that gender role will avoid it, as previously said. But just watch the news for 10 minutes and you’ll catch several juicy samples.
Most women will also avoid it. One exception was the current queen in her first years in Denmark, my guess is that she had a male enunciation coach who wasn’t aware enough of the phenomenon to teach her that aspect. (I haven’t paid attention during her more recent public speaking occasions).
@Lars: I don’t have LinkedIn on my phone, and it seems I can’t get it up and running without my job e-mail, which I also (by the mercy of God) don’t have on my phone. Could you e-mail me at [firstname]@[lastname].priv.no?
My job email refuses to run on my phone. So if they ask why I didn’t reply, the answer is “Security!”
My LinkedIn is coupled to my private email (on my private company’s mail server) since I use it to solicit my next IT trick.
I only have LinkedIn at all because I was told I would need it to take part in a hiring process. Now I get e-mails every now and then telling me that my profile looks good and somebody just looked at it, so let us help you make it look even better and be looked at by even more. But they don’t fool me. It doesn’t look good, and nobody ever looks at it.
But I do keep it as a way to get in touch with me. It’s just no good while I’m on holiday, as I just learned.
Research report: Lunch happened. Rain happened. Jazz happened.
A soaking wet day in Copenhagen, but the lunch was good and indoors, and the conversation was extendable. When we finally had to go back outside, our local guide soon found refuge at what turned out to be a concert with an up-and-coming jazz band named Kiosk. They were so charming and interesting that I will seek them out again — at least for a second take on the lyrics of their rap/recital vocal. Then I had to redraw in a hurry because the family needed my signature to check in at the hotel. It later turned out that one of them had caught a bug.
Now we’re on the ferry back home. The first hour has been peaceful. The sun is breaking through, and the Sound is silent.
The sun is breaking through, and the Sound is silent.
*doffs hat, impressed and amused*
…not bad… not bad at all.
@Vanya: i don’t actually know – i believe there’s some yiddish theater presence lingering in bucharest from the era of state support, and i know or know of yiddish musicians in moldova and maramureș (and i think in central transylvania), but i don’t know what’s up in yash these days. (i’ve never been there – my closest approach was probably suceava, about 20 years ago) if you find exciting things, i’d love to hear about them!